Mademoiselle Blanche

When she returned home, she was surprised to hear that Madame Le Baron had called several times, and had left word that she was anxious to see her as soon as she came back. This news sent her with a throbbing heart to Albemarle Street; she felt sure that something terrible had happened, something she might have prevented by staying in London. She was always assuming responsibilities and then dropping them! How often her husband had told her that! She had been more than culpable, she kept saying to herself, in going away without even bidding Blanche good-bye, without even leaving an address.

When she arrived at the hotel, at the close of a cold, foggy afternoon, she was surprised to be told by the garçon that Madame Le Baron had left, and had gone to an apartment in Upper Bedford Place. "It was too expensive for them here," the garçon explained with a contemptuous grin. "So they went to a private house."

Mrs. Tate drove at once to the number the boy gave her, and a few moments later she was climbing the stairs to Blanche's apartment. She was out of breath when she rapped on the door, and still breathing hard when Madeleine admitted her into the shabby drawing-room. A moment later, as Blanche appeared from the next room, she uttered an exclamation.

"Good Heavens, child, what has happened to you! You're whiter than ever, and so thin! What have you been doing to yourself? Have you had an illness?"

Blanche shook her head. "No, I haven't been ill," she replied, but her looks and her manner seemed to belie her words. The gray cloth dress which had once fitted her tightly now hung loosely about her; her face was drawn and of a chalklike pallor, and under the eyes were two black lines betraying weeks of suffering and sleeplessness.

"You were thin enough before I went away," said Mrs. Tate, "but now you're a perfect spectre."

Then she went on to explain how she had happened to desert her friends for so long a time. "I know you have something to tell me," she said, starting from her seat, "but before you begin I want to see Jeanne. How is she? But first tell me how you happened to come way up here. Isn't it a long distance for you to climb after your performance every night?"

"Jules chose these rooms because they were so much cheaper than the hotel," Blanche replied simply. "We prepare our own meals, too, and we save in that way. You know my salary is so much smaller than it used to be."

Mrs. Tate made no comment, and they went into the other room, where Jeanne was sleeping in the crib.

"She sleeps nearly all the time," said Blanche, with a faint smile that seemed to exaggerate the expression of pain and weariness in her face.

"How big she's growing!" Mrs. Tate whispered. "There's certainly nothing the matter with her, the dear little thing, with her fat rosy cheeks. I'd just like to take her in my arms and hug her."

For several minutes they stood talking about the child; then they left her with Madeleine and went back to the drawing-room, which Mrs. Tate's keen eyes discovered was used also as a bedroom. "They must be economizing with a vengeance," she thought. Blanche closed the door, and took a seat behind her visitor on the couch.

"Now I want to hear all about it," Mrs. Tate cried. "Something has happened. What is it?" She took both of Blanche's hands and looked into her eyes. "What is it?" she repeated.

For a moment they sat looking at each other. Then Blanche bent forward, buried her head on Mrs. Tate's lap, and burst into tears. Mrs. Tate said nothing, and allowed the paroxysm to spend itself. Then, gradually, the story came out.

Jules didn't love her any more, Blanche moaned. He had been cruel to her, oh, so cruel; he had said such dreadful things! And then there had been days and days when he scarcely spoke to her or to the little Jeanne or to Madeleine, and he had grown so strict with them all; he hardly allowed Madeleine enough to buy the things they needed. And once, he had said such dreadful things about Jeanne. He didn't love even Jeanne any more, – poor little Jeanne! He said they would have been better off if she had never been born. Oh, that had nearly killed her, that he should have spoken so about Jeanne. She didn't care so much about herself, though sometimes she wanted to die. One night she had prayed that God would take her and Jeanne together. Jules had always been so good to her until – until that woman came, that woman who had taken her place in the circus. It was that woman who had come between them, with her white teeth and her mocking laugh. She was making a fool of Jules; she did not care for him, but she pretended that she did, just to amuse herself. Jules followed her about everywhere; he even talked of going to America, because she was to go in a few weeks, when her engagement at the Hippodrome was over. But Blanche would die; she would throw herself into the river with Jeanne in her arms rather than go there now. Ah, it had been so hard for her, alone in a strange country, with no one but Madeleine to confide in. Madeleine had been so good; but she, too, had grown afraid of Jules in these last weeks. They scarcely dared to speak when he was at home, now.

From broken utterances, Mrs. Tate pieced together the whole miserable story. For the moment, her pity was lost in admiration for her husband's perspicacity. He had foreseen this! Now, for the first time, she realized what she had vaguely surmised before, the full meaning of his mysterious remark about Blanche and Jules. Then she turned her attention to the prostrate figure before her, offering sympathy and counsel. She knew that she was speaking in platitudes, but they were all she could offer then; and, after all, it was Blanche's own outburst that would do the poor pent-up creature the most good, the consciousness that she had some one to confide in.

Mrs. Tate stayed in the little apartment a long time, and when she went away, Blanche seemed to feel more hopeful. "Act as if he were just as kind to you as ever," was her parting injunction, "and I know everything will come out all right. He'll find out that that dreadful woman is only making a fool of him, and then he'll care more for you than ever."

In her heart, however, Mrs. Tate knew that what she said was not true. Jules had probably grown tired of his wife. The more she thought of the case, the more she pitied Blanche, – the more she realized what a tragedy in the poor little woman's life it meant. And she really had been to blame, she kept saying to herself. But for her interference, Blanche would have gone on with her diving, that other performer would not have come to the Hippodrome, and all of Blanche's agony of jealousy and neglect would have been avoided.

Oh, what a lesson it taught her! Never, never would she interfere in a family again! She would have done much better to let Blanche go to her death, rather than to drive her to despair, perhaps to a worse form of death by her meddling.

On reaching home, she was in a fever of remorse and sympathy, and she passed a miserable hour waiting for her husband to return. When at last he did appear, she met him in the hall.

"Percy," she cried dramatically, "you're a prophet!"

"Am I, indeed?" he said, putting his umbrella in the rack. "Do you mean to say this is the first time you've found it out?"

"I'll never doubt your word again, Percy," she went on, stifling a sob. Her appeal to her husband for sympathy threatened to make her hysterical, but she controlled herself and gasped out: "Don't you remember what you said about that man, Le Baron, – you know, the night he dined here, about his falling in love with his wife's performance! Well, that's just what he did do. He didn't fall in love with her; he's never been in love with her, poor thing. Fortunately she doesn't know that. It's only her performance, that horrible plunge she used to make, that he's been in love with all along."

"I don't see anything very prophetic about that," he said, walking into the drawing-room, where she followed him, clutching at the lace handkerchief in her hand. "It was as plain as daylight to any one that heard him talk and saw what kind of man he was."

"I don't mean your seeing merely that. I could tell from what you said that you saw a great deal more. Don't you remember what you said about professional jealousy not being the worst kind of jealousy in the world? That was the first thing that opened my eyes. I went to the next matinée to see for myself if it could be true, and if I hadn't been an idiot I should have realized it all then. But the next day, just before we left for Berlin, I called on that poor woman, and she seemed so much easier in mind, I thought I must have misunderstood what you meant and been mistaken about that look."

"My dear, I don't quite follow you. Aren't you just a little bit illogical?"

"No, I'm not. I'm perfectly logical. I never was more logical in my life."

"I suppose you mean that the fellow has got tired of his wife, now that she's given up her dive, and he's fallen in love with the other woman."

Mrs. Tate rose tragically from her chair and made a sweeping gesture with her right hand. "With the other woman's performance."

Tate looked at her for a moment, with smiling incredulity. "How ridiculous!" he said.

"That's exactly what I said when you told me he had fallen in love with his wife's performance. I said it was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard in my life. I couldn't have believed it if I hadn't observed it with my own eyes. But that afternoon I saw him – he stood near me, leaning against the railing – and I wish you could have seen the expression in his face while that woman was exhibiting herself, especially when she made her horrible dives."

For a moment Tate stood without speaking. Then he said: —

"I'm afraid you're putting a romantic interpretation on a very simple sequence of events. That fellow probably did fall in love with his wife's performance, and incidentally he liked the money that went with it. When she stopped her diving and became an ordinary performer, like thousands of others, she ceased to interest him. Then he looked around for some one else to be interested in, and when the other acrobatic person appeared he was just in the condition to be caught."

"I don't believe it. It's a – "

"There's one way, of course, of proving whether you're right or not," Tate interrupted, with a quizzical smile.

"What's that?"

"If your theory is correct, the only thing for Madame Le Baron to do is to go back to her performance. Then she'll meet her rival on her own ground. From what I've read about that other performer, Madame Le Baron's dive must be twice as difficult and twice as thrilling as hers."

Mrs. Tate turned to her husband with a look of admiration, her breath coming and going in quick gasps. "Percy, that's the wisest thing you've ever said in your life." A moment later she added, with a change of tone: "But isn't the whole thing too absurd?"

He started to go upstairs. "You know we're due at the Bigelows in an hour?"

"Wait a minute," said Mrs. Tate. "I want to think over what you said. You can't imagine how this thing has worried me. It's all due to my meddling. Oh, I know that; you needn't say anything to me about it. But I'm determined to help that poor woman if I can. Oh, if I had only followed your advice, and let them alone!" she moaned.

"There's no use worrying now. The mischief's done. He would probably have got tired of her anyway."

"If something isn't done to bring him back to her," she went on without heeding his remark, "it will kill her. I'm sure of that. If you could only see her. She looks like a ghost, and her hands tremble so! I don't believe she's slept a wink for weeks. I don't see how she gets through her performances. A clinging creature like her just lives on affection. Before she was married she always had her mother to take care of her. To think that that man should treat her so! Oh, it's a shame, it's a shame!"

Tate was standing at the door. "If she's going to kill herself over that fellow, she might as well have gone on with her diving and killed herself that way. You ask her if she doesn't want to go back to it," he added, with the quizzical smile, "and see if she won't jump at the chance."

"Do you suppose that she can suspect for an instant that her husband fell in love with her performance?" she said, her eyes following her husband up the stairs.

"She probably hasn't reasoned it out, but I haven't a doubt she feels it intuitively," he replied, continuing his ascent. "You just ask her if she doesn't want to make the plunge again and see what she'll say," he concluded, smiling down at her from the floor above.

XX

Mrs. Tate tried, by an almost impassioned kindness, to atone for her neglect of Blanche during her absence from London. She sent her flowers from her conservatory, she bought gifts for the little Jeanne, she called at the apartment in Upper Bedford Place nearly every morning. During these visits she did not once meet Jules; Blanche told her that he always went away soon after breakfast, and seldom returned before dinner. Sometimes he did not accompany her to the Hippodrome, but he never failed to appear there during the evening. The management had offered to reëngage Miss King as soon as her contract expired, and the diver thought of postponing her return to America; but they had not as yet come to terms, as the girl wanted a much larger salary than she had been receiving.

It was this information that reminded Mrs. Tate to ask Blanche if she were sorry she had given up her plunge and if she ever wished to resume it. Though she had at first been impressed by the solution of Blanche's troubles suggested by her husband, she had on sober second thought dismissed it as ridiculously romantic; such things might happen in novels, but they never could occur in real life. Her belief was shaken, however, when she saw the pale face light up at her question.

"Oh, yes," Blanche cried, "I have thought of it. Sometimes – sometimes I think it would be better if I hadn't given it up. Then – then that woman wouldn't have come." Her eyes filled with tears, but she controlled herself and, a moment later, she went on: —

"But I – I thought it was wrong for me to risk my life, and it made me so unhappy for Jeanne's sake. But sometimes I think I might have stopped being afraid. Before Jeanne was born I never had the least thought of fear, even after father was killed, because I knew that was because the trapeze was weak. Oh, I'm sure," she went on piteously, – "I'm sure I shouldn't be afraid any more!"